Using Twitter to Market Your Small Business

Twitter is a great means of connecting with friends. Since it was launched, the social media site has become a platform where people interact with each other in real time. However, people in Twitter these days talk not just about personal milestones or the highlights of the day, such as the awesome course they had for dinner. Twitter has already become an avenue where businesses talk to their customers to tell them about their products and answer whatever questions they may have. It is also a place, which allows business owners to interact with other business executives. They learn from each other and from the results of their analyses, they try to overdo each other.

Since Twitter allows for conversations in real time this micro blogging platform has become a formidable tool in marketing. Currently all existing types of businesses are in Twitter. For them, and especially those, which are small-scale and have budgetary limitations Twitter has been very helpful in launching successful marketing campaigns.

By using only 140-character updates, a Twitter account holder has the power to connect directly with potential buyers, and for that reason alone businesses need to figure out how to take advantage of Twitter’s features in order to get ahead of the competition. Here we will provide you with ideas on how to use Twitter to promote your small business to the world.

Twitter allows small business owners to interact not only with customers that are already patronizing their products, but also with customers that are still deciding whether or not to buy. Because of the direct interaction allowed, many of those who started out undecided end up making a purchase. Having direct conversations with business owners gives potential customers the chance to ask whatever questions they may have about the product or service. In this way, they get the answers that they need to make a final decision, and they do not even have to spend any money or wait for a few days. In addition, the direct interaction makes customers feel special, and this is very important to customers as well.

Many benefits await business owners who are keen on connecting with their audience via Twitter. First of all, Twitter gives them a chance to get the message across fast. Though it can be quite challenging to engage customers with 140 characters, words are not the only means of communicating with audiences. Images and video clips can also be used to send the message across. Selling on sites such as Amazon and eBay definitely helps, but Twitter is the vehicle by which people can be informed immediately of the products that are for sale as soon as they are available.

Twitter was established in the year 2006 and since then it has evolved into a social media giant. There is no other microblogging platform on the planet like Twitter. It is very easy to set up and use, and it can be accessed anywhere for as long as a stable Internet connection is available. Twitter is also accessible to everybody, and the current press coverage available to users is unimaginable just a few decades before.

Perhaps the best thing about Twitter is that there is no need to for anything more than the tools at hand to make a marketing wizard out of anybody. As such, Twitter also offers many opportunities to grow a small business into something that is even much bigger than what they imagined. Getting the attention of the right people is made easier, and without incurring high advertising costs.

With all the benefits that business can gain, holders of a Twitter account do not even have to possess a high level of computer or Internet skills to maximize its available features. After clicking on the “Follow” button, the tweets automatically appear on the user’s homepage, and in chronological order. Since every post will appear on every follower’s homepage, along with other tweets, business owners only need to focus on how to make their post stand out from the rest.

There are also tools provided by Twitter so that business managers can know how many people are talking about the business and/or the products and services offered. It is also possible to determine what the competition is doing and what the rest of the industry is up to. Twitter offers small businesses not just the opportunity to market their wares at very little to no expense. The social media site also offers analytical tools and opportunities to help businesses strategize and improve on their promotional offers.

There is more to tweeting than meets the eye. What this means is that it will not really make much of a difference for a business if it will only post tweets that directly promotes its business. Here are a few helpful guidelines for small businesses that are just exploring the possibilities offered by the most popular micro-blogging site in the world today.

First of all, it is important to keep posts industry-relevant. This guideline also applies to comments and retweets. Tweets that include links are also more popular than those that do not have any. A tweet with a link is automatically more interesting to users, and this is true for tweets that have images attached to them. Next, it is also important for Twitter users to get new and relevant information. If there is no pertinent and current data to share, new insights are a good alternative. There is another important guideline. The best way to engage people who are hovering in the Twitterverse is to respond to them, thank them for their feedback, and be especially attentive to criticisms.

Small business owners new to Twitter must also keep reminding themselves not to overdo it. Twitter followers must always be treated as real-world friends. Friends do not want to receive daily e-mails telling them to spend their money on something that they cannot yet touch. Being bombarded with tweets about a product is the best way to be ignored in the end. Nevertheless, products on sale still need to be mentioned once in a while.

It is also important to use hashtags (#) so that any Twitter user who is searching for the subject will see the post. The use of hashtags must be done wisely so that the tweets will not get lost in the feeds that use the same hashtag.

Growing a Twitter account with real followers doesn't occur overnight so in June of 2014 I got serious about development of my Twitter account. As a Coin Dealer that is active on eBay and Amazon I wanted a way of notifying my customers about new items for sale, special deals being offered, new Hubpages, and new YouTube videos. My method to increase my number of followers was to Follow at least one person or business on Twitter that was related to coins or precious metals. Twitter makes this easy with all their suggestions on people to follow. Apparently several of the people followed me back. I try to tweet every day and limit the number of tweets to a few a day. I also had small notes on several of my eBay listing that asked people to follow us on Twitter.

The table below shows the development over time of my Twitter account @DCoins.